Office 365 study: complexity overwhelms knowledge workers

Press release

Office 365 study: complexity overwhelms knowledge workers

harmon.ie increases workplace productivity via e-mail-based information management

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Leonberg, Germany

30 April 2019

A new user study shows that the simple introduction of Office 365 does not automatically lead to an efficient digital workplace. Many knowledge workers are overwhelmed with the variety of tools, information management is not lived consistently. harmon.ie shows how intelligent information management can be implemented on the basis of the familiar Outlook e-mail environment.

Microsoft positions Office 365 as a modern productivity center, with Teams, SharePoint and the Office apps as a new digital workplace. However, as the SharePoint and Office 365 User Study 2019 found out, many corporate knowledge workers in the German-speaking world are overwhelmed by the masses of apps and new ways of working.

The survey showed that only a few of the constantly growing Office 365 portfolio with over 20 apps are regularly used. The e-mail application Outlook is right at the top in terms of degree of use and acceptance, followed by OneNote, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. Very little use is made of apps such as Delve, Stream and Bookings.

Also the modern functions for document management, as it offers SharePoint already for years, still overwhelms many business users. Three-quarters of the users surveyed (73 percent) use SharePoint libraries as document storage, but the high degree of use of the file servers with 55 percent, which have long been declared dead, speaks for itself. Other alternatives mentioned were OneDrive (42 percent), Team Documents (29 percent) and central DMS (22 percent).

In order to lower the thresholds for the use of SharePoint and Office 365 as intelligent information management, harmon.ie offers an extension for Microsoft Outlook. This allows business users to transfer all types of documents to SharePoint directly from their familiar Outlook workstation environment.

harmon.ie thus addresses two key deficits in Microsoft environments:

  • The majority of all business-relevant documents enter the company via Outlook and then very often remain in the personal mailboxes.
  • SharePoint still lacks an easy-to-use interface with which users can store business documents and emails quickly and with metadata.

The harmon.ie extension for Microsoft Outlook is used, for example, by the customer REHAU Group: The internal process for storing and passing on case files, legal documents and other important data is thus optimized and streamlined, making it possible to merge important information from all points at different locations, including Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook. The Legal Department has offices in several countries. Before harmon.ie, this meant multiple file storage systems in multiple locations. By using harmon.ie within its SharePoint and Office environment, the REHAU Group has been able to consolidate inconsistent information into one location.

"We have found that a harmon.ie and SharePoint solution covers 95% or almost 100% of our needs and is much less expensive than a specialized third-party solution," said Christian Steier, Legal Digital Officer, REHAU Group.

As a core component, harmon.ie provides an Explorer-like Outlook sidebar. Users are supported with additional functions for intelligent information management, such as automatic metadata assignment and ordering schemes using topics.

About harmon.ie

harmon.ie is the world's leading provider of intelligent e-mail management solutions with Office 365. The flagship product harmon.ie´s merges SharePoint and Office 365 information in Outlook, organized by topic. Currently, more than 1.600 companies in 45 countries rely on harmon.ie's Digital Workplace solutions, which achieve higher employee productivity with unmatched levels of information compliance and governance. The company is a Microsoft Partner of the Year finalist, Microsoft App of the Year winner and IBM Global Partner.

Press Contact:
Lisa Ostermaier
STERNSCHMIEDE PR
0152-086 520 80
sternschmiede@email.de

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